As we look ahead to the new year, hope seems to be in short supply. Recent surveys have found that sizable majorities of Americans believed the United States was on track to become economically weaker ...

There is a children’s story I used to read to my daughters when they were 3 and 4 years old. It comes from Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” series and involves a big batch of ...

America has become a country of cynics. At least, that’s what studies show.People don’t trust each other, the media or the government. Most Americans, about 80 percent, don’t feel confident ...

In the long run, resolutions that keep others in mind tend to have greater staying power. Studies have found that brute willpower alone lasts for only so long, and that people have a much harder time ...

Most couples — even the unicorns among us who claim they “never fight” — need regular relationship maintenance. And the effort comes with major payoffs: Strong romantic partnerships are good for ...

The day before my brother’s wedding, we stood together on the concrete car park that covers a fraction of our mother’s yard. I had written my best man speech on the plane from New York, ...

Whether through religious rituals, concerts, or protests, synchrony with others through movement, behavior, and collective emotions often brings us together. Current research suggests strikingly ...

The Harry Potter audiobooks helped Katy Milkman make a foundational discovery about exercise behavior.A Harvard graduate student at the time, she was struggling to work out. Once a varsity tennis ...

Finding "the one" can seem like life's ultimate goal—but should it be? This hour, TED speakers expand the definition of life partnership, whether it's with a friend, a spouse, a pet, or no one at ...

Most of us see the connection between social and physical pain as a figurative one. We agree that “love hurts,” but we don’t think it hurts the way that, say, being kicked in the shin hurts. At the ...

In the last 5 years, the use of handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets has exploded, and it should come as no surprise that the massive growth in smart technology has had a trickle-down ...

A few years ago a group of Swiss researchers scanned the brains of people who had been wronged during an economic exchange game. These people had trusted their partners to split a pot of money with ...